From: DeeALusby1@aol.com
Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2002 11:45:17 EST
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: cell size measurement

In a message dated 1/1/02 6:11:01 AM Pacific Standard Time,
allend@internode.net writes:

> People went decades, almost a century, believing that foundation is benign
> and that ample sizes are optimal for cells, both to accommodate the size
> full range of bees that are managed, and also to allow bees to reach the
> maximum size that their genetics allow. Now this is brought into question
> and some efforts are underway to go to an opposite extreme, again using
> foundation.

Reply:
Well, I am agreeing with Allen Dick here in that many beekeepers think that
foundation is just foundation and has no bearing upon their bees. How wrong they are, for it is both the creation of the heart of the hive and it's working liver for filtering out disease.

That foundation changes the size of the bee is known or we would not be in
this mess. Beyond that, how many know it changes the diet, even already at
birth as the royal jelly is different depending upon the size of the cell. It
changes the foraging behaviour of bees. It changes the thermoregulation of
bees. It changes the breeding parameters of mating of the bees by changing the aerodynamics. It changes the in-house job breakdown of the bees. It changes a lot.

Allen wrote:
> also to allow bees to reach the maximum size that their
> genetics allow.

Yes, this is true, but it must be done artificially to maintain this and in great quantity of production of artificial foundation. Also to get there, exceptionally large bees must be produced and this can only be done by usage of COMPLEX MONGREL breeding. In Nature only simply hybrids are normally produced which would allow for the upper spectrum only of the natural found comb sizes that Cowan talked about. Used for transitioning into and out of localized areas the bees live within. It is a gradual thing of sizing transition. In actuality in looking at Cowan we learn that sizing is quite uniform thoughout the temperate areas of our world.

Allen Dick again writes:
> some efforts are underway to go to an opposite extreme, again
> using foundation.

As of yet, I myself do not see this happening. We are selves have positioned ourselves in the middle of the old sizing spectrum, midway between 4.7mm and 5.0mm, choosing 4.9mm for top tolerance, knowing that some bees will seeing this as the large then regulate into the 4.8mm zone and 4.7mm zone.

It will only be when beekeepers push in the future into the 4.7mm and 4.8mm zone that we might need to get concerned, as the sizing will then ratchet down with the small and medium sizes into the lower 4.6mm range, etc. But then too, economics will dictate as compact broodnests and combs will not offer production the larger combs will.

It is this production factor that has spurred on the last century the quest
for bigger is better. But it was not actual production gained for the bees,
it was slide of hand only of enlargement of the broodnest and stealing of
honey and backfeeding of sugar syrups and artificial feeds that actually gave the larger crops, which again were modern ways of rethinking of what crops
actually were.

Well, now we know that foundation is not benign after a century of learning,
and must now regress with the coming century, it shall be interesting to see
where we shall end up at the end of this coming one! Have we learned to stay within the natural spectrum of sizing or will we go beyond again?

Regards,

Dee A. Lusby